Recent Articles

Growing Up Challenge: An Invitation With Eternal Implications

As I mentioned on Friday, we want you to “Get in the Game” in 2014. Learn how to get started by watching my sermon from Sunday. Why are we looking at the calling of the disciples in a series about making disciples? Before you can make disciples, you must be a disciple. It’s fitting that…

A Comma That Has Kept The Church In A Coma

Learn how to get started with the Growing Up Challenge by watching my sermon from Sunday. Punctuation marks are important. Moreover, correct punctuation is essential. In the wrong place, such simple marks can be devastating. Take these two sentences for example: “Let’s eat Grandpa!” and “let’s eat, Grandpa!” The comma makes a big difference—especially for…

The Maturation Process For Making Disciples

Haven’t Signed up for the Growing Up Challenge? It’s Not too Late. Sign up Now! Our church is experiencing a revival. There is more excitement about discipleship and growing closer to Christ than ever before. I believe that a return to discipleship is the revival of the 21st century.” I am not introducing a new…

What You Miss By Not Making Disciples

As we conclude the Growing Up Challenge series, we examine what you miss out on by not making disciples. Sign up for the Growing Up Challenge. It was the summer of 1986. I was 9 years old. My sister Lori was 7. And after seeing the movie Space Camp, we were determined to go to…

Reality Check: Ready or Not, Here He Comes

We are continuing our series on 1 John called Reality Check. Did you know that there is a difference between these terms waiting for Christ and watching for Christ? Let me illustrate this with the story of a fishing vessel returning home after many days at sea. As the crew neared the shore, the sailors…

Reality Check: Jesus Loves Me, This I Know

The message of the gospel is simple: God so loved the world that He gave his only Son. The emphasis is His love. 1 John 3:11–24, For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 we should not be like Cain, who was of the…

Reality Check: Standard-Lies Testing

Any test in which the same test is given in the same manner to all test takers is a standardized test. The opposite of a standardized test is a non-standardized test. Non-standardized testing gives different tests to different test takers, or gives the same test under significantly different conditions. For example, one group is permitted…

Reality Check: You Can’t Show What You Don’t Know

Rig, our 5 year old son, loves to play with his super hero action figures. He lines them up all the good guys, and the bad guys. He props up his bat cave in one corner, and the batmobile in the other. Dinosaurs perch from the bed overlooking the floor, while stuffed animals take their…

Reality Check: How to Abide And Conquer Fear

The text we will study this morning was the favorite text of one of my spiritual heroes William Tyndale, the first man to translate the New Testament into english from the Greek. At the age of 30, Tyndale was the private tutor of a six-year-old named Harry Walsh, son of a Knight of Gloucestershire, in…

Reality Check: The One Prayer That God Doesn’t Answer

As we conclude our series on 1 John, we examine 1 John 5:16–21. One thing you can “be sure of is that your sins will find you out.” you can hide sin for a season, but it will always find you. It reminds me of the young couple about to get married. The young man…